Praying Mantis Club

I was in St. Louis this weekend for the wedding of my dear friend, Mary. She is one of the five founding members of the PMC, or Praying Mantis Club (pictured left, though Mary is absent because she's greeting her wedding guests). It's a group of girls that would get together every month, once upon a time when we all lived in Kansas City, and try a new adventure each time we gathered. Our only common thread at the beginning? Me.

It was a tentative gathering at first, as we tried to figure out our role in this group as only women do. We picked apples in Weston. We ate at new restaurants. We tried yoga in a room heated to over 100 degrees and, even though Rhonda passed out, the rest of us held our poses perfectly. We drank too much wine. We laughed really loud in public places. No ones asked us to leave, but they probably should have. We did pottery. We perfected our self-defense moves. We even made predictions on where we would end up in five or 10 years.

In the fun of it all, we gave ourselves a name, Praying Mantis Club. This came from our merriment (dark and sinister as it may be) at the role of the male praying mantis in the sex act. In order to even have sex, the female must first bite off his head and then he dies. For sex. Only a male of any species would die for sex, but only a female would bite off his head and then proceed to get it on with a headless male. Relationships are complex. We all agree on that.

All of us made it this weekend to Mary's wedding. It was a reunion of the sweetest, and even bitter sweetest, kind. I really miss my friends. These are unique women that grow stronger every year, but unfortunately it's without me being near. I'm not there for every story, or heartache, or miracle. I'm the faraway friend. Because I love these friends so much, I've even managed to block myself off from some new friendships where I live now. That may be the saddest part of the equation, I think.

Friendship is an amazing and complex thing. It's hard to understand why some groups work and others just fizzle away. Thank you, PMC, for all the memories and love. I was reminded how much I love you this weekend. It's time to move on. I know you'll understand.

Detoxifying Your Life

I heard the other day on the radio that one of the best things you can do for your body is to drink hot water with lemon every morning. It's nature's best detoxifier. Your liver will love you, absolutely love you, after only a few short days of this hot lemonade tonic. Sounds simple, right? Then again, this is me we are talking about.

I agonized for days on whether I should buy fresh lemons or the juice in that plastic yellow lemon bottle. Fresh lemons are best, I know, but they always seem to slide to the back of our fridge and shrivel up. I can't tell you how many 99-cent lemons I've wasted in my lifetime (you might hate me if I even try to give you an estimate). Then when I called my husband in the middle of the day to ask his opinion on the lemon saga, he was kind of rude. To me. About lemons.

I buy the fresh lemons (in a huff!). The radio guy says to drink it first thing in the morning because this is what your liver really likes, so I make a mental note to make this the first step in my day. Get up, stretch, then quietly drink your detoxifier. If I lived in a normal house, this might be doable, but my house is a circus, complete with two baby cubs and a dog that always need my attention. I'm lucky if manage to get a hot cup of coffee before mid-morning.

It's been three weeks. No morning detoxifier. Tonight, however, I am turning things around and trying my first hot water with fresh lemon (well, a three-week old and slightly wrinkled lemon) while I write this. Kids and hubby are in bed and, unfortunately, the dog is licking himself with unrelenting determination next to my chair. It's a sound that drives me crazy. The drink, thank goodness, tastes just fine.

I wonder if we can really detoxify our body and our lives with one single step. Is it as easy as squeezing fresh lemons in hot water and chugging it down? I think our lives are moving at such a warp speed that we will cling to any solution that might claim to help us, or save us, or simplify us. We are willing to let random people on the radio direct our lives in rush hour instead of slowing down to reflect on how our lives got here, hectic and perhaps a little hairy.

Perhaps the true detox comes when we accept our major role in making our lives what they are (because we do, after all, fill it up) and then, miraculously, choosing to embrace it or change it. We each have the power to do both though we often choose to do neither. And for those, like me, who are comfortable with worry and constant fatigue, might I suggest starting slow with some quiet time, or semi-quiet time if you have a dog, to enjoy a nice steaming cup of lemon water. It's a start and your liver will absolutely love you.

The Master Plan

The Lord has a plan for my life. I know this to be true. What I don't know, may never know, is why all the filler happens in between. I mean I'm completely good with all the joyful stuff. Bring on the warm puppy smell and loud kid giggles. Sunrise and sunset? Count me in every time. I even find value in the people I meet along the way.

It's the other stuff I'm talking about. The kind of things that bring you to your knees or, worse yet, leave you laying there in a fetal position. Helpless. Afraid. It's the hurt and sadness and despair, all rolled into one. It's the uglier part of life.

While I have plenty of downward dips in my life, it is nothing compared to what my friend, Heather, is going through right now. For 35 days, she has been trying to be boring. Doing nothing, literally nothing, in a hospital bed because she's been trying to hold her baby inside her womb. He has had a myriad of health problems, including the risk of kidney failure when born. If he is not born at more than four pounds, he will not be given the gift of dialysis.

He was born yesterday. Over five pounds (thank you, Lord!), but still several weeks premature. His name is Jacob. He is a sweet, beautiful baby. Jacob also is in kidney failure, has an infected colon outside of his body, and faces other life-threatening issues. He has had two surgeries in his short life. News is not even day by day anymore. It is hour by hour. My friend is one of the strongest women I know, but this is one of those wear-you-down-in-the-worst-kind-of-way obstacles.

In all the Lord's infinite wisdom, I wish there was a way to carry the burden for others, to take part of their struggle, strap it to our own back, and carry it away. I would do this for her. I love her that much. Unfortunately, this isn't how life works. We can only lift up our prayers on their behalf, not take away the really tough part of the journey. Perhaps it is the Lord's plan that we must be broken before we can be built back up again. He gives us each other so we can survive.

Howling at the Moon

I'm an Aquarius. A water baby, if you will. And although I rarely read my horoscope, I believe there is something to be said for how the stars were aligning the day you were born. I once read Aquarius women are eccentric, loyal (but usually with only a select few), and willing to try anything once. Sounds sexy, doesn't it? Well, it's not.

I am eccentric. Except you're only eccentric when you're rich. I'm just weird. I have all these strong feelings about random stuff, like not wearing deodorant because it causes cancer or leaving only one hubcap on my car because all the others ones have vanished. The things I should care about? I don't. Sorting laundry by color, rising up the corporate ladder, finishing things I start. Meaningless endeavors in my world.

I'm also loyal to the bone. My loyalty goes so deep in fact that I only let one to two people really get to know me in my whole lifetime. My best friend, Jamie, is one. My husband is the other. While I love having lots of different friends and sharing stories with others, I rarely tell them my darkest, deepest secrets. I don't think I'm terribly bad, but I don't think I'm terribly good either. I'm just hard to love. It's been safer along the way to be selective.

The last Aquarius trait I have in spades. I'm a risk taker. I am, quite literally, willing to try anything once. I have jumped out of an airplane. Eaten from the mouths of others to win a contest. Quit a job out of frustration. Tattooed my skin. Swam naked at night in the ocean during a jelly fish alert. All this stuff, silly and sometimes stupid, to be able to personally experience it. To say, I loved or I hated it, but I know for myself because I tried it.

I have a necklace that my Mom gave me for my birthday a few years back with a picture of the exact moon in the sky on the day and year I was born. It was a seven descending, waning moon. The note attached said, "Let this serve as a constant reminder to always look up. Is it your moon in the sky tonight?" If I was another astrological sign, it might be enough to calmly look up at the moon and meditate. Instead, I'm the crazy one running around her yard naked, covered in war paint, cursing the moon like a wild banshee. This is how it goes with Aquarius women. The only thing you know is that you never really know.

Edward vs. Jacob

When I left the movie theater last night, I was once again smitten and bitten (not literally, of course, though it is very tempting) with the vampire world in Forks, Washington. This seems crazy to me because I'm not 12. I'm 32. Yet, here I was rushing to the movies, all giddy and restless to see how the love story would unfold on the big screen.

And it is a crazy love story. Vampires. Werewolves. A clumsy, yet stunningly beautiful, heroine. Two men, also heroically handsome, who love her with such a passion that it makes everything else so trivial. It is an all-consuming love. Hold on to it and burn, or let it go and fade away. Just like the characters, even though I sense danger in every scene, I cannot look away.

So, what keeps us coming back for more in this Edward versus Jacob saga? It might be that we enjoy a good love story, or perhaps it's our curiosity about the darker side. For me, and this may be true for many women, it's the burning hot chemistry. It's the way he looks at her, as if he wants to brand her his woman for eternity. "Brand me, brand me," I often feel like yelling.

As much as I love this escapism, I also worry about it. This is not real life. This is not even real love. For those more seasoned and cynical to the world (yes, this is me!), it's just two hours to escape from kids and housework, but for other impressionable young girls, it becomes the picture of perfect love. Everything else, even something honest and real, falls short. It makes me sad because life is hard enough. You don't need to be disillusioned about love, too.

Don't get me wrong here. I'm all for hot love. I encourage sniffing people because you can't live without their scent and imprinting on your life mate, even in the womb. I like hot kissing, but agree about waiting for marriage and losing your virginity until right after graduation. When my friend fell in love a few years back, she said she just wanted to eat him up, hair and all, because she loved him so much. Did I discourage that? No, ma'am. I'm no love hater.

The story in Forks can teach us many things, good and bad. It's been very well done, but it's also Hollywood and that makes it tragically flawed. It's really hard to remember all that, especially with Jacob sporting the hot, bronzed skin and beautiful, white teeth. For now, it's back to my real life until the next movie rolls around, though I am planning to buy some tight flannel shirts this fall. I love you, Edward. I'll see you soon.

Sweet Nothings in My Ear

My husband is a talker. From the minute I arrive home, he's talking about some random part of his day, like the crazy lady that cut him off in traffic or this hysterical joke he heard on the radio. He is so passionate when he speaks, too, as if this is the only thing in the world he wants to be doing---talking to me.

Most of the time (and this will sound terrible, I know), I just tune him out. I'm busy getting chores started, or supper ready, or homework done. Kids are circling me like vultures. He plants himself next to me in the kitchen, or wherever I might be, and keeps going on and on with his stories. I occasionally hear something of interest and insert a thoughtful question that sends him into another half-hour monologue. Noise, and more noise, always in my ear.

My husband has now been gone for four days on a mission trip. There is no cell phone coverage where he is working, only heat and years of oppression. It's been the longest span we have ever gone without talking in our 14 year relationship. We have four more days to go. On the first evening, I was so giddy with the silence that I sat on the couch with no television, radio or computer to distract me. Only the candles buzzed slightly around me as I caught up on all my celebrity gossip. The change felt miraculous.

It's gone downhill since then. I miss my husband something fierce in almost a panicked kind of way, as if this stretch of silence is permanent instead of just a week in our lives. I never would have expected that I would miss his endless banter, or his dirty socks under the coffee table, or his looks of pure mischief before he goes chasing after our kids. I miss the noise. I miss his chaotic energy. I miss, sadly enough, the flawed man. He makes our house a home.

That's the really screwed up part about life, I think. No, correct that. That's the really screwed up part about people. We want we don't have, but then when we get it, IF we finally get it, we often want it to go back to the way it was. We hurt others, we even hurt ourselves, in search of something better. Turns out, it was pretty damn good right here.

Yes, I Do!

When I got married 10 years ago, I had long curly hair, a college diploma with the ink barely dry, a whole plethora of life experiences (I thought!) in my back pocket. I was 22, but I felt 32. People constantly asked if I was ready to get married, being so young and all, and I remember thinking that they knew absolutely nothing about me. I was mature and energetic. I was ambitious, but kind. And above all us, I was loyal, through the good and the bad.

I had no flippin' idea. Marriage was actually work, really hard work at that. This person who wooed me and loved me and read poetry to me turned out to be the least romantic husband in the world. It's like the wedding package was all bright and shiny, but the marriage center was kind of gooey and tart. I already took a bite, so it was too late to return it to the store.

Today, it's been 10 years since we took our vows. I am 32, but I feel 42. I am still the wife to one, but now a mother to two. Life is so exhausting that I rarely think about the day I wore white and promised to love, honor and cherish. I hardly know the girl I was. I have, however, gained a few more life experiences, which is good because the jeans are a little bigger these days, too.

If I could give advice to a soon-to-be-bride, who, like me, is young and a tad foolish for the bright, shiny package of marriage, here is what I would say:

• Nothing can prepare you for your new husband moving his stuff into your one bedroom apartment in trash bags then asking where he should hang his black light. Do not be afraid. It may take 10-15 years, but he may mature into something really amazing, especially with your love and acceptance. Then again, he may not.
• There are five love languages. Know your own, but especially know your husbands. You are wasting your energy doing four other love languages when, really, all you need to focus in on is one--his. It helps to tape your love language to the bathroom mirror, so he reads what you need every morning of his life.
• Nobody is perfect. If you can't forget, at least try to forgive. You may sacrifice more, hurt more, give more, love more than you ever imagined, but there are great rewards. The ironic part is that you might not always see those rewards. Keep working on it anyway.
• In the first year of marriage, go through a Dave Ramsey Financial Peace class, so you the last thing you have to worry about is your finances. Also, please don't play the lottery. Being rich gets you in as much trouble as being poor. Aim for the middle, or a little higher, I say.
• Never mention divorce in jest or in anger. I truly believe saying the word gives it power over your relationship. It's like a seed in the bottom of your heart. It may grow sprouts at the oddest time and push all the other good stuff right out of the way.
• Lastly, be careful of all marriage advice from others, including the information above. Every person is different, so is every marriage. Cookie cutter advice only works well when making cookies, not when talking about relationships or people.

I can honestly say I love my husband more today than I did when we got married. He also drives me just as crazy. It's our anniversary and we made a wonderful family meal in the kitchen together with our kids, which just tugs on the heart strings, but now I've got to go clean up in the kitchen all by myself. He's on the couch, sprawled out, laughing hysterically at the TV.

This is my married life, the good and the bad. I do, I do, I do.